Living In a New Surveillance State

 

As I sit here to write, I think about freedom. The Constitution provides Americans with certain inalienable rights that are protected by such a document. The key aspect of republican democracy lies in its laws and the foundation of those laws, but what happens when those same laws begin to deteriorate the fabric of what has been laid down, brick by proverbial brick, by past generations dating back to the Founding Fathers? What happens when technology gives government the ability to observe its citizens on a scale that previous generations could never have imagined?

Society has two options when faced with such a state of being: allow it to happen or stand up against such potentially unlawful action. Today, I am here to talk about the surveillance state unfolding before our very eyes with the proliferation of Flock cameras.

Personal liberties not explicitly enumerated within the Constitution are not necessarily surrendered simply because they were not written word for word into the Bill of Rights. The Ninth Amendment states:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Such an amendment is significant because it recognizes that the liberties retained by the people extend beyond the specific rights expressly listed within the Constitution.

One of those liberties is the freedom to travel. The Supreme Court has long recognized a constitutional right to interstate travel. That right does not mean that a person is free from every law regulating the operation of a motor vehicle, but it does recognize that Americans possess a fundamental liberty to move between the states. (Legal Information Institute⁠)

This raises a question that becomes increasingly important in the age of automated surveillance: Can a person exercise that freedom without the government creating a permanent or comprehensive record of where that person has been?

Some will say Flock cameras will make our cities, states, and nation as a whole safer for its people. Protecting the right to life, liberty, and property is paramount to the function of government and its agencies. But to what lengths should government go to maintain such a world?

As we examine the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, we realize that citizens have protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. That protection does not mean that every government observation requires a warrant. However, the Supreme Court has increasingly recognized that modern technology can fundamentally change the privacy implications of government surveillance.

In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court addressed government access to historical cell-site location information. The Court recognized that a person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection simply by entering the public sphere. More importantly, the Court recognized that prolonged location tracking can provide an extraordinarily detailed record of a person’s movements and associations. (Supreme Court⁠)

That principle deserves serious consideration when we examine automated license plate readers.

A person driving down a public road is obviously visible to other people. But there is a profound difference between being seen by another person and having one’s movements digitally recorded, stored, searched, analyzed, and potentially reconstructed months or years later.

Technology has changed the equation.

An individual officer following a vehicle for several minutes is one thing. A network of cameras capable of recording the movements of vehicles across an entire region is something entirely different. The technology can transform isolated observations into a searchable history of a person’s movements.

And this is where the question of government power becomes particularly important.

The abuse of such systems is not merely theoretical. In Georgia, law-enforcement officers have been fired and arrested over alleged misuse of Flock systems. In Richmond County, officials have acknowledged controversy surrounding the technology, while investigators have pursued cases involving officers accused of using the system for purposes unrelated to legitimate law enforcement. (https://www.wrdw.com⁠)

Human emotions, curiosity, personal relationships, and abuse of authority will inevitably play a role in any system operated by human beings. A technology designed to locate stolen vehicles or identify suspects can potentially become something entirely different when placed into the hands of someone who decides to use it for personal reasons.

I see the benefits of tracking cars for the purpose of catching criminals. I understand why law enforcement wants access to technology capable of locating stolen vehicles, identifying suspects, and assisting with serious investigations. Technology can undoubtedly serve a legitimate public-safety purpose.

But to what extent should we allow our civil liberties to be stepped on in the name of safety and security?

Technology can be useful and detrimental to society simultaneously.

The question is not necessarily whether Flock cameras are good or bad. The deeper question is whether there should be constitutional and legal limits on the government’s ability to create a comprehensive record of ordinary citizens’ movements.

If an innocent person travels from Augusta to Atlanta, Atlanta to Savannah, Savannah to Columbia, and back home again, should the government be capable of reconstructing that person’s movements simply because cameras happened to record the vehicle along the way?

And if that information exists, who can access it?

How long should it be retained?

What constitutes a legitimate law-enforcement purpose?

Does an officer need reasonable suspicion before searching someone’s historical movements, or can the information simply be searched because it is available?

What happens when private companies possess enormous databases of information about the movements of American citizens and government agencies can obtain or access that information?

These are not merely technological questions. They are questions about the relationship between the individual and the state.

The Founders could not have envisioned a world in which cameras positioned along public roads could automatically identify vehicles and create searchable records of their movements. But the principles they established—liberty, privacy, limited government, and protection against unreasonable searches—must be considered within the technological world we now inhabit.

The question before us is therefore much larger than Flock cameras.

It is this:

Can a free society remain free if its government possesses the technological ability to know where its citizens are, where they have been, and where they are going?

And perhaps the most important question of all is whether we should wait until that technology is abused before deciding where the constitutional boundary should be.